


l’ange de l’assassinat

by taxicab12



Series: more to me than you can dream [22]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, French Revolution, Gen, Just barely pre-Booker, Pre-Canon, Wikipedia levels of historical accuracy, actual historical figure, andy-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26519254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taxicab12/pseuds/taxicab12
Summary: “I need some space,” she said. “I’ll see you again.”She hadn’t said when, or where, but those things worked themselves out. She was sure that she needed the loneliness.Paris was lonely, no one trusted strangers, and as the months went on, few trusted even friends. She was sure she deserved this, so in Paris she stayed.It was July that broke Andy from her haze, July and a woman with a knife.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: more to me than you can dream [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1878034
Comments: 8
Kudos: 65





	l’ange de l’assassinat

**Author's Note:**

> This is during the same general time period as ‘etchings in the corners of my mind’, #11 in this series if you’re wondering what Joe and Nicky are up to during this separation

_ Paris, 1793 _

The streets were quiet.

It didn’t take long to find out why, that it had been three days since the king of France was executed, drums drowning out his last words as the guillotine fell. They called it revolution. In whispers, a brave few called it other things.

Andy didn’t care much for the king of France, but she didn’t like the quiet.

She had come to escape the quiet, the little apartment on the edge of Constantinople, where Nicholas and Joseph sat with silent smiles.

How Quynh would’ve loved that place, how she had always loved Constantinople.

But Quynh was gone. Nicholas and Joseph had stayed behind in Constantinople when they had parted ways two years before.

“We can come with you,” Joseph had said, Nicholas’s hand intertwined with his. It was the way he said we, the unfair sense of wholeness, that made Andy shake her head.

“I need some space,” she said. “I’ll see you again.”

She hadn’t said when, or where, but those things worked themselves out. She was sure that she needed the loneliness.

Paris was lonely, no one trusted strangers, and as the months went on, few trusted even friends. She was sure she deserved this, so in Paris she stayed.

Winter gave way to spring, then to summer, and Andromache of Scythia stayed in Paris as the city went to hell.

It was July that broke her out of this haze, still before the worst of the killing, though no one was to know that at the time. The need for equality, to destroy the monarchy and to raise up the people, had only begun to fade, to be replaced by a need for power, for violence.

It was July that broke Andy from her haze, July and a woman with a knife.

The woman wasn’t brandishing it, or screaming for violence, but keeping it tucked at her side, desperate that no one should see her desperation. Everyone in Paris was loud in their revolution or quiet in their discontent, but she was neither as she moved quickly through the streets, a quiet revolution of her own dancing in her eyes.

“You shouldn’t hold it like that,” Andy said, stepping beside her, showing how her own knife was hidden beneath layers of clothes. “What might people think?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the woman said.

But there was fight in her voice, war in her eyes, so Andy smiled. 

“You look like you could use a drink.”

The woman went to refuse, as any proper Frenchwoman would such a statement from a stranger, but then she shrugged. “I guess I could.”

Andy’s apartment in Paris was what Joseph lovingly referred to as a shithole, but it was more than enough for her.

“What’s your name?” She asked, as she poured two glasses.

“Charlotte,” the woman said. Clearly, there was more to that name, the French always had more to their names, but that was all she was inclined to say.

“Andromache,” Andy said, sitting down and passing one of the glasses. “So, what’s the story with the knife?”

“Looking to turn me in?”

“I’m not from around here.” She laughed. “And I’m certainly not trying to get involved.”

Charlotte looked at her for a long moment. “If you must know, I’m going to kill a man tonight.”

Andy raised a brow.

Charlotte was young, but determination was set on her face like stone. She wasn’t afraid.

“One in particular?”

“Marat,” she said, rage in her eyes but not in her tone. “He is firing up rage in the country. Not him alone, to be sure, but he is to blame for massacres last year, for the fear in people’s faces. I cannot let him destroy us.”

“He’s a revolutionary, then?” Andy didn’t know the name.

“I’m a revolutionary,” she said. “I believe in freedom and equality, for us as well as for men, so you could even say I’m more revolutionary than he. But he preaches violences. Men like him will kill us all and when there is no one else left, they will rebel against the tyranny of their own self.”

Andy took a long sip.

“Do you have nothing to say now that I’ve made myself a traitor to the revolution aloud?”

“What exactly are you trying to accomplish?”

“I want to save France. Maybe if I kill him, the violence and the fear and the terror will stop. One life for all of France, I can forgive myself that.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Then I die trying. Is there nothing you would die for, Andromache?”

It was a difficult question for a woman who couldn’t die, but Andy tried to imagine her final death. Only one answer came to mind and it lay at the bottom of the ocean.

“No,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“Then I pity you,” Charlotte said. “I am not afraid to die for France. I only fear for my country, my family, the future in a world that no longer makes sense.”

“The world has never made sense,” Andy said. “We just pretend it does to keep from going mad.”

“I can drink to that.” She took her first sip. “Why do you care if you claim you don’t want to get involved?”

“Why tell me about a murder before you commit it?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I’m a fool, but I’m tired of the fear. I’m tired of trusting no one. I just want the violence to end.”

“I’m running away,” Andy said, not realizing the truth of the words until she said them. “And I decided I deserved to stay here in my loneliness.”

“No one deserves loneliness,” she said. “We force it upon ourselves out of fear. I watch my neighbors and friends do it every day now, afraid of what the wrong words will do. What are you running from, Andromache?”

“A long time ago, someone died,” she said. “I tried to move on, tried to do what I always do, tried to forget, but I keep realizing that I don’t know who I am without her.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for your pain. What was her name?”

“Quynh.”

“Quynh,” Charlotte repeated, closing her eyes. “Perhaps I will see her soon.”

Andy laughed at that, surprising herself. “You’re so ready to die.”

“I think I should be afraid to die, but I’m not. I don’t care about the cost, just about saving my country.”

She had the bravery of an immortal, though she was not one. In some ways, she reminded Andy of Quynh, though the women were nothing alike.

“Give me that knife,” Andy said.

“Why?” She slid the knife on the table.

“Have you ever killed a man with a kitchen knife?” She asked with a smile.

“No.”

“I have. Let me teach you how.”

They talked for three more hours, Charlotte finished her drink, and then it was over. She stood up, bade her goodbye, and left, nothing in her eyes indicating a murder in her near future.

“Don’t forget me,” she said, pausing on her way out the door, “though it’s vain to ask of you.”

“I won’t,” Andy said.

She smiled. “Don’t mourn me either.”

Andy had nothing to say in response, just watched her leave.

It was raining the day Charlotte died. Andy didn’t go to watch the guillotine fall, but she was sure to commit the woman to memory, and to keep her there for as long as possible.

The violence didn’t stop, only grew and grew until the death was unthinkable. And yet, Andy couldn’t help but think of Charlotte with a sort of fondness, a woman who hadn’t known the terror her actions would bring, who had only wanted to help. She had done what she thought was right.

Andy wanted to do what was right. Maybe she wouldn’t always get it, but for now it had to be enough to try to help, to try to do what was right. Intentions were all she had.

Guillotines kept falling. Andy herself was guillotined a dozen different times in half that many years, but for the first time in over a century, she didn’t wake from every death thinking of Quynh.

It took more than a decade, but Nicholas and Joseph found her as Napoleon waged war on the continent. Joseph picked her up and spun he around in a joyful hug and Andy actually let out a genuine laugh.

Nicholas pulled her into a hug, pressing a kiss to her temple. “It’s good to see you.”

She would die for them, she remembered, the feeling having been buried under so much grief. She would die for them, and she would die for the weak, and the suffering, and the oppressed. She had failed Quynh, she would not fail them.

A few short years later, all three of them woke with a start, the same images in each of their minds.

A Frenchman with a noose around his neck, dying and living and dying again.

“Was that...?” Joseph asked, “another?”

Andromache of Scythia had let so many years pass by. Now she had a purpose again.

“What did you did you see?”

**Author's Note:**

> Charlotte Corday was an actual person who killed Jean-Paul Marat, which is arguably one of the things that started the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.  
> After her death, she was referred to as l’ange de l’assassinat or the angel of assassination


End file.
